Metallica Covers Black Sabbath Classics at Back to the Beginning Farewell Concert

Metallica made sure to honor Black Sabbath at Back to the Beginning. At Black Sabbath’s highly-anticipated goodbye show, which featured performances from a multitude of bands, Metallica opted to play two Black Sabbath covers during their set.

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Metallica opened their time on stage by performing Black Sabbath’s 1975 track “Hole in the Sky.” It’s a track they’ve performed live before, but not in more than 15 years.

The second Black Sabbath cover was one Metallica had never performed onstage: 1978’s “Johnny Blade.”

Metallica also played some of their own music at the show, delighting the crowd with performances of “Creeping Death, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “Battery.” and “Master of Puppets.”

Back to the Beginning saw frontman Ozzy Osbourne reunite with Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward for the first time in 20 years. It marked Osbourne’s final show ever.

Metallica’s Robert Trujillo on Black Sabbath’s Impact

Ahead of the concert, Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo spoke to Billboard about being a part of the show. The honor was particularly special for Trujillo, who was Osbourne’s bass player before he joined his current band.

“I’m always there for Ozz,” Trujillo said. “It’s surreal… to go from playing Black Sabbath songs and Ozzy solo material at backyard parties at age sort of 16 and 17… and then once I got on stage with Ozzy when I played in his band, playing songs like ‘Iron Man,’ ‘Sweet Leaf’ and ‘War Pigs’ was so incredible and surreal, like a dream come true.”

“To do that and there he is, in front of me — it was great,” he continued. “So this experience we’re about to have in Birmingham is really special, but it’s also sad because you know this is the final show for them, and that’s definite. It feels like the closing of a chapter.”

Trujillo isn’t the only Metallica member who’s been influenced by Black Sabbath’s music. He said that vocalist and guitarist James Hetfield, drummer Lars Ulrich, and guitarist Kirk Hammett all have similar stories.

“The first music that was heavy that really did scare me came from Black Sabbath. All of us in Metallica have similar stories,” Trujillo said of his bandmates. “It was listening to the song ‘Black Sabbath’ and looking at that photo of the woman on the [first album] cover, with the church in the background, and scaring ourselves: ‘What is this all about? Who is this woman? Where is this?’ It just resonated with us and scared us as kids. It’s so funny we had that similar experience. I thought that was pretty cool.”

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